Rabbi Hertz described the task before those raising the fund as vast and urgent. The response to the appeal for funds from the British Jews, he said, was not nearly adequate, mainly owing to their ignorance of the real state of affairs. For nearly a year there had been a sinister silence in the general press, broken only occasionally by a sneer at the Jews on the part of the preachers of race hatred and apologists for reaction. The Jews, he added, were face to face with a tragedy unparalleled in the history of Jewish agony.

The Petrograd authorities, Rabbi Hertz concluded, expected a million pounds ($5,000,000) from the British Jews, and only $300,000 had been raised. He said the present call was for sacrifice and and self-taxation.